Shuuichi's Secret by Sionna Klassen, Sandra Jacobs, and Kristin Huntsman Kurama packed the dirt in with his fingers, then looked up at his mother. Shiori wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, then bent to pull a particularly obstinate weed. A straw hat shaded her face from the sun which beat down mercilessly on the garden. Kurama sat back on his heels and regarded the tiny rosebush he'd just planted with something like parental affection. He could make sure, the way most gardeners couldn't, that the plant would not only survive but thrive in its new home. And this rosebush would bloom every year, without fail, or even more often than that if he asked it to. But doing that might make his mother suspicious. He glanced at her again, brushing his damp hair out of his eyes. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. "It's too hot to be out here," he complained. "We'll get sunstroke." It was hotter than Kurama could ever remember it being in the Ningenkai, at least since he'd been here. Kurama wished for a breath of breeze, but the air remained thick and still like stagnant water. Shiori sat up straight and took off her hat, fanning herself with it. She looked at her watch. "It's only going to get hotter," she said. "It isn't even noon yet." "Hotter than *this*?" Kurama slumped backward onto the grass. "I don't believe it!" Shiori smiled tolerantly. "If you're hot, why don't you go get us some water from the fridge?" At least she was being sort of sensible. "Okay," he said, standing. It was obviously useless to try and persuade her to abandon the yard work until she'd decided she was finished. He started toward the house, then stopped short. A chill touched the back of his neck that wasn't wind. He turned around, just as something huge and dark rose up and blotted out the sun. Kurama shielded his face and braced himself as a freezing blast of air attempted to send him flying. Chips of ice nicked across the exposed skin of his arms, and he shivered as the temperature of the entire garden plunged instantly to a level where he could see frost forming on the leaves of the plants. The wind died to a whisper, and Kurama lowered his arms, blinking in the sudden dimness. The sunlight was muffled in thick clouds, darkening the air until it was a false twilight. His breath wisped in clouds from his face and a thin coating of ice covered everything. Everything except the youkai that stood facing him. Even in the dim light, Kurama could see the glitter of the ice that formed the youkai's body, sometimes dull blue, like the heart of an ancient glacier, sometimes yellow from the twilight's weak illumination. His face, twisted with a sadistic smile, was chipped from ice, all angles and planes, and clear as glass. Frost edged the tips of his talons, clear and sharp as broken glass, frost dusted his blocky body and crackled from him, violently punctuating every move he made. "So I've found you, Kurama," he said. "What?" Kurama asked, pretending ignorance. "Don't be an idiot," the youkai sneered. "I know perfectly well who you are. I've come to kill you." "Why?" "Come now, you know how these things work. We may be in the Ningenkai now, but the rules of the Makai still hold for us. If I kill you, I'll rise in power - and since you're the heir to the Silver Fox clan, that means a substantial rise in status. It's nothing personal, you understand. I just have to kill you." Kurama had no chance to respond as the demon suddenly flexed his muscles, and a wall of ice rippled from him, tearing up the ground as it swallowed the garden. Kurama ran from it and grabbed his mother's hand, turning to run from the garden - Only to see spikes of ice drive upwards from the ground, cutting off the escape route. Kurama whirled again, looking for another way out, but Shiori's grip on his hand suddenly vanished. He turned hastily, searching for her, and heard the ice demon laughing. "Over here," he taunted. Kurama looked at him and stiffened. Huge formations of ice, like abstract statues, surrounded him like a twisted tree. One of the ice-branches held Shiori suspended ten feet above the ground. "Well?" the demon asked. "I can easily kill her any time I choose. You are going to have to do better than that, Kurama. I won't gain any prestige by killing you if you make it so easy." Kurama shivered in the freezing air, glaring at the ice demon. He had no choice left, the youkai had made sure of that. But he wasn't. Kurama considered briefly. The entire garden was frozen solid, locked in ice. He would have to create his own plants. He closed his eyes and channeled power in two directions at once. A whirlwind sprang up around him, whipping his hair around his face as it bleached to silver. Kurama let the wind die as soon as the transformation was complete, wraiths of smoke still curling from the ice under his feet as he stood facing the demon. "Well?" Kurama asked, shaking back his silvered hair. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?" The unnamed youkai grinned, but there was a hint of uneasiness to it. He had expected Kurama to value his secret too highly to give it away, and had anticipated an easy victory over a Kurama trapped in human form. Kurama could tell that the ice demon was beginning to have second thoughts. "Killing you will get me everything I ever wanted," he said, trying not to let on that he was worried he might not be able to beat Kurama as a youko. Winds roared up around him, whipping glittering chunks of ice around him in a sparkling barrier that he suddenly flung at Kurama. Kurama countered with a whirlwind of his own, rose petals mixing with the shards of ice and shattering them into freezing dust. Both miniature tornadoes dissipated rapidly, canceling each other out. The youkai hesitated, then froze the air around Kurama, trapping him in a boulder of ice. Kurama flexed raw power and shattered it, suppressing a shiver at how close that had been. Thankfully he'd been near full power when the youkai had flung that at him, because otherwise he might not have been able to free himself.... He counterattacked before the ice demon could think of something else, sending huge plants that bore a vague resemblance to Venus flytraps eeling across the ground, fanged mouths snapping ravenously as they trapped the youkai in a writhing circle. He ducked as one lunged at him, then sent a wave of rippling, alternating power outward. It froze the plants solid, then struck the brittle plants and shattered them. The third ripple flung the pieces outward in a destructive hail, and the fourth hit them and made them arrow through the air even faster. Kurama dodged the pieces of ice, but didn't miss the thing they were supposed to distract him from: the fifth ripple in the wave. A giant leaf unfolded in front of him, shielding him from a blast of freezing air that was liberally mixed with needles of ice. A few of them tore through the leaf and grazed Kurama's skin, but they were too small to have much effect. Kurama let the leaf fall again, studying the ice demon. He was breathing hard, having expended most of his energy by this point. Or so Kurama hoped. This fight was taking much too long.... A plant which seemed to be made almost entirely of teeth exploded from the ground underneath the youkai and snapped its teeth shut on him. It was frozen in the next instant and fell apart. The youkai freed himself from the remains of the plant and yelled something incoherent with rage. A blizzard engulfed the entire area, literally appearing from nowhere. Gale-force winds battered Kurama's body, and the temperature dropped so fast that the air seared his lungs in mid-breath. The winds shrieked in his ears, and snow blinded him completely. The snow was whipping through the air so fast that it felt like sandpaper against his skin. He staggered, his limbs going numb from the cold, and irrelevantly remembered his complaint about the heat not ten minutes before, wishing it would come back. A shadow appeared in the snow and attacked before Kurama could do more than realize it was there. He was so numb that he barely felt any pain as the youkai sliced across his side and arm with a knife made of jagged ice. He deliberately collapsed into the drifts of snow that had been collecting around his legs in an effort to trip him up, lying still as he let the wind blast over him. For some reason, although the cold made his body nearly unresponsive, his mind didn't stop working. The ice demon wouldn't have risked himself in such a close-quarter attack unless he had to - he could easily have thrown large chunks of ice at Kurama and battered him from a distance, and he was nervous enough about his chances of winning that he would have used such an attack if he had the power left. Which meant that he must have used almost everything on creating the blizzard, and sustaining it against the normal weather pattern of intense heat was probably draining him even more. Kurama doubted the youkai had any real clue about how little damage he'd inflicted with that slash; the snow, combined with how quickly he was trying to get out of range, had probably confused the issue quite effectively. So Kurama waited, playing dead. The youkai would have to come closer to check, to make sure. He wouldn't get any points for leaving a job half-done. He had to prove Kurama's death. The winds started to die, weakening as the ice demon approached cautiously. Kurama could make out his dark shape within the flurries of snow that were slowly settling to the ground. He still had the ice-dagger in his hand, red with frozen blood. Kurama closed his eyes before the youkai got close enough to make out any details, and waited, listening to the youkai's crunching footsteps in the snow, gradually coming nearer. Then they stopped. There was a moment's hesitation, but he still wasn't close enough. Kurama held his breath. Another two steps. It was enough. If the ice demon had gotten to within arm's range, he would have been even more on his guard, but he was still several steps in the clear, or so he had thought. Thus he was very surprised when he found himself suddenly impaled by a blade of twining thorned stems. He looked down stupidly at Kurama's arm, wrapped around with a delicate tracery of stems that trickled from the cut. Blood-red roses bloomed slowly against the white, near-translucent skin of Kurama's arm, and his golden eyes watched impassively as the youkai fell, the stems tearing free of his heart. The ice melted in an instant. The dark clouds that had been blotting out the sun burned away, allowing the light to fall back on the newly-thawed garden. The sudden heat fell on Kurama's half-frozen body like a hammer blow. Shiori yelped as she was dumped unceremoniously on the ground, then stared at Kurama, her eyes wide. Kurama, for once in his life, didn't know what to do, what to say. He'd never prepared for his mother finding out that he truly wasn't her son. He couldn't do anything but watch her helplessly as she sat up and then rose to her feet. "Shuuichi?" she asked in a whisper, then fainted dead away, falling to the ground again. Kurama watched blankly for a second, until his brain kicked back into gear. He walked over to Shiori and gently lifted her in his arms, carrying her into the house. She was so light.... he remembered. He walked into the house and set Shiori down on the couch, taking care not to get bloodstains on it, the carpet, or her clothes. Once that was done, he wearily let his power drain out. His silvery youko body swirled and returned to being human. Kurama stood and walked to the kitchen, getting a glass of water from the refrigerator. He walked back to the living room and set it down on a coaster on the coffee table. His mother would need something to drink when she woke up. Temperature extremes exhausted the body's water supply. Kurama wondered. he decided. Kurama stepped outside, into the punishing, pounding sunshine. It was hot outside, but right now, that felt good. The sunlight did nothing to help his head, though. It felt like there were a dozen hammers banging on his skull. Kurama had left his shades in his room, though, so simply tried to ignore the sun as he softly closed the door to his house behind him and locked it. Having no particular destination in mind, he wandered, heading in a direction that he knew didn't lead to his school, or past the houses of anyone he knew. He needed to be alone now. He liked being alone. He was always alone... especially now... now that Shiori knew, he could no longer masquerade as her son... he could no longer protect her, take care of her, as he always had. He had lost the only place he had ever belonged.... Kurama didn't notice as his feet began to move faster and faster, carrying him away from the spot where his inhumanity had been revealed, and all for a stupid game of youkai prestige.... Kurama cried in his mind, and began to run, wishing he could leave it all behind. The look in her eyes when she had seen him... that look of hurt, of betrayal... of fear.... Kurama kept running, as hard and as fast as he could, crying and running out of breath, until he reached the forest that bordered his town. He stumbled through the branches and brambles, tears blurring his eyes and blinding him, until he couldn't run any farther. He collapsed to his knees on the ground, panting, trying very hard not to cry, and blacked out, falling to the ground. Shiori opened her eyes slowly, and sat up even more slowly, her head throbbing. She saw a glass of water on the table, and a bottle of aspirin next to it. She slowly opened the aspirin and took two, finishing the whole glass of lukewarm water, and began to feel slightly better afterwards. Shuuichi had set it out, of course. He was such a good boy, always doing everything he could.... Shiori's thoughts trailed off. Shuuichi! In the garden... what had happened? He had somehow... *become*... a fox spirit, fighting... against *whatever* that ice creature had been.... Shiori wandered absently into the kitchen, her mind circling wildly. She'd always been a good mother, she thought. She'd taken care of her son after his father's death, made sure he had never wanted for anything, be it monetary or emotional. She thought she'd known all about him. But she hadn't.... She moved into the dining room and sat down at the table, staring unseeingly at the flower arrangement before her, until her eyes slowly began to focus on it. She frowned, and reached out to one of the blossoms. A yellow daffodil. In the middle of summer. As that suddenly registered, she blinked. And it fell into place. Shuuichi had said - as he did about all of his off-season flowers that he brought home for her - that he had a friend with a temperature-control greenhouse, that his friend grew flowers out of season for a whim. she thought. Her gentle face softened again at that realization. Daffodils were her favorite flower, and he always gave her a huge bouquet of them on her birthday. She frowned again and let herself think. In the garden, he had transformed... into a fox spirit. Taller than any human, with unlikely gold eyes and translucent skin... and silver fox ears and a tail. she thought to herself. Shiori stood up and walked to the phone. Her brilliant son had some odd friends. Two students in junior high hanging out with a second-year high school student was odd. Especially when they were borderline delinquents and he was at the top of his class. Resolutely, she dialed a number written on the list by the phone. It rang twice, then picked up. "Hi, Urameshi residence." "Hello, Yuusuke. This is Shiori, Shuuichi's mother. Is he there?" There was a slight pause on the other end, then Yuusuke answered, albeit a little uncomfortably, "No, he's not. Has something happened?" "... Yes," Shiori replied. "Can you talk for a while?" "Hey, Yuusuke, who is it?" Yuusuke nearly dropped the phone. He covered the receiver and yelled down the hall: "It's Keiko, mom." "That's nice." The TV volume went up. Yuusuke let out an exaggerated sigh of relief and picked up the phone again. "Ok, Mrs. Minamino... what's wrong? Is Shuuichi okay? Are you okay?" "We're both fine, thank you. But I'm wondering... when you boys are together, does he say or do anything, you know... unusual?" "Um... what do you mean by 'unusual'?" asked Yuusuke, praying for once in his life to sound innocent. Shiori felt then that she would never get anywhere by being oblique about this. She loved her son very much, and would do anything in the world for him, but there was a very fine line between devotion and blind self sacrifice. A sigh buzzed softly over the receiver, then a long pause. "Yuusuke-kun, it's like this...." Yuusuke, for his part, did his very best not to swear when he heard the conclusion of Mrs. Minamino's tale. All this time, Kurama managed to keep it a secret, and now... what was he going to do? And... why the random attack from a youkai? Now that Minamino-san knew, her life was in real danger as a target for any youkai with a grudge against Kurama. And there were many, many youkai out there with grudges.... "Okay, Mrs. Minamino, I have to come clean on a coupla things... for your sake and his. First, I know that he can do these things. Second, he and I, well, we're kind of a team, you see? We work together...." "Doing what?" Mrs. Minamino braced herself. "Well, we... we make sure that things like that demon who showed up in your garden don't hurt anybody." "I beg your pardon?" "Urameshi Yuusuke, Spirit World Investigator." "Shuuichi... helps you apprehend demons?" Yuusuke chuckled over the phone, a little nervously. "Sure, Mrs. Minamino... you didn't think he hung around me to get study tips, did ya?" Kuwabara was lost. When he'd thought of looking in the forest for wildflowers he could pick for Yukina, (seeing as he was too broke to afford ones from a florist's shop) it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Granted, he *had* found some, but he'd also managed to lose the path back. The area he was in didn't seem to have anything in the way of paths, so he kept having to push through bushes. If it was any time other than noon, he could even have looked at the sun for direction, but the sun was right overhead and being highly unhelpful. "Oh man," Kuwabara sighed, walking past another tree that looked exactly the same as one he'd passed five minutes ago. "I'm never gonna get out of here." He wiped sweat from his forehead with his discarded shirt. It was too hot, even in the shade. He'd already had to throw away the flowers, as they'd wilted almost immediately in the heat. He was tempted to just lie down under a tree and take a nap for a few hours until the sun sank enough to be of some use, but something told him that doing that would be a bad idea at the moment. He glanced to his right, and suddenly decided to go that way. He wasn't sure why, but one thing the past few months had taught him was to follow his instincts. So he resumed pushing through the undergrowth, grumbling under his breath as it tried to fight his progress by sticking sharp branches into his legs. A flash of red up ahead suddenly and very effectively distracted him from his annoyance at the plants. He hesitated, then moved forward. "Kurama?" he yelped in surprise. He moved forward quickly. Kurama lay crumpled underneath a tree, dirt and leaves in his hair. Kuwabara saw red stains soaking through the right side and sleeve of his white T-shirt. "Kurama?" he asked, touching his friend's shoulder. "Kurama, are you okay?" Kurama didn't respond. Kuwabara looked closer and saw a thin green vine trailing down Kurama's arm from the wound, one red rose blooming at the end like a bright drop of blood. He wondered who Kurama had been fighting. Kuwabara sat down crosslegged on the ground and wondered what to do. He'd take Kurama home, except that would raise some awkward questions with Kurama's mother. And then, of course, there was the problem that he didn't actually know which way to go to get out of the woods. "Oh great. Now what the hell do I do?" "You could try using your brain, except that would require you to have one first," a deep, sarcastic, and familiar voice said. Kuwabara looked up and glared at Hiei. "Oh, so *now* you show up, jerk. What the hell do *you* want?" "To show you the way out of here," Hiei said. "Since you'd never find it on your own." "Oh yeah? Why do you care?" "I don't care about *you*," Hiei specified. "Wandering around in this kind of heat couldn't possibly do any further damage to what passes for your brain." "Oh yeah?" Kuwabara grinned instead of reacting to the insult, which actually surprised Hiei. "Then that means you care about Kurama." Caught off-guard, Hiei muttered "I owe him, that's all." "Uh-huh." "Are you coming or not?" Hiei demanded. "If you were worried, why didn't you get him out of here yourself?" Kuwabara asked as he pulled on his shirt. He was enjoying this. It was incredibly rare that he managed to get the upper hand in a verbal battle with Hiei. Plus it was SO nice to see the little shrimp squirm.... Hiei glowered. "You know I can't!" he finally snapped. Kuwabara picked up Kurama's limp body and settled it over his shoulders. "So you actually need me for something. Must be a real pain being that short sometimes." "I am going to *kill* you," Hiei growled. Kuwabara finally decided that the game had gone far enough. Much as he'd enjoyed feeling superior over Hiei, the important thing right now was to get Kurama home. "So which way?" he asked. Hiei turned with a final parting glare and started through the undergrowth, further annoyed by having to move slowly enough so that Kuwabara could follow. "This way," he said. He got part of his revenge on the way back, though, as Kuwabara's hands were occupied with keeping Kurama on his back, and that meant that he couldn't move branches out of his way. He looked like he'd gotten into an argument with a dozen angry cats by the time they reached the forest's edge, and he was exhausted. "I can't get all the way home," he gasped. "No way." "Kurama's house is closer..." Hiei said, hesitating to go out into the punishing glare of the sunlight. Although he'd abandoned his cloak for a more practical tank top, his clothes were still black. Kuwabara thought privately that Hiei had to be insane too to wear black on a day like this. "Yeah, but what'll we tell his mom?" Hiei thought for a moment. "He was out in the sun too long and he passed out - which is probably true - and he got hurt when he fell. That's the best I can come up with." "Yeah, but what about this?" Kuwabara poked the stem curled around Kurama's arm. "Good question." Hiei examined it closely. "Can't we just pull it out?" Kuwabara asked. "Idiot," Hiei said. "You don't get it, do you? It's not that simple. That flower is *part* of him. It's growing *from* his body. It would be like pulling off one of your fingers."